Month: March 2017

Programming has never been my favorite task as an engineer. It may relate to the fact that each new project came with learning yet another language. The activation energy to start up always appeared more daunting then it would turn out to be. Ironically, my programming skills helped in getting my summer job at NBS…

“If music be the food of love, play on.” –William Shakespeare Earlier this month I attended a concert of Los Romeros, the “Royal Family of the Guitar.” They played a lovely concert that included Angel Romero as a guest. I first heard them nineteen years ago on what turned out to be my first date…

My graduate school applications resulted in several PhD programs to choose from. Naturally, I visited each school. After an eight-hour drive from Poughkeepsie, NY to Pittsburgh, PA, I found myself across a desk from Wojciech Maly. The acceptance letter indicated he would be my advisor. He took time from teaching his VLSI design project class to…

I learned to knit in third grade. A hat and scarf of psychedelic green and orange resulted from my efforts; the colors well indicate the 1970s. Many a gift has been knit for friends and family over the years. As noted in a previous post I have participated in charity-based knitting efforts. In the past…

After successful deployment of AC I/O loopback for single-ended interfaces, we rapidly had to prepare for High Speed I/O (HSIO) circuitry. The HSIO derived from Serializer/Deserializer (aka SerDes) interfaces commonly used in telecommunications. Computer systems’ thirst for higher data rates drove the adoption of this interface architecture. These I/O circuits had significant differences from single-ended…